The Beach
by la-chevreuille
Summary: On the run from his brother, Sasuke finds himself in a tiny, superstitious seaside village that seems to have more than its fair share of secrets--most of them concerning Naruto, a boy with a strange tattoo and a stranger connection to Sasuke.
1. Prologue: Running

**THE BEACH**  
Prologue: Running  
by eggadshorace  
» Fandom: Naruto  
» Rating: M  
» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP  
» Classification(s): Romance, Mystery, Action/Adventure  
» Warnings: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations  
» Pairing(s): Naruto/Sasuke

--o--

Prologue: Running

--o--

"Ban-ZAAIIIII!"

Someone's shout echoed the peel of the dismissal bell, and someone else laughed, but the sounds were soon lost in the rising buzz and chatter of a school let out for summer vacation. Chairs scraped the floor and a girl near the front did a quick shimmy before linking arms with another and making a beeline for the door.

As the classroom emptied out, Sasuke stacked his books neatly, from largest to smallest, and arranged them _just so_ in his bag. He checked for loose paper, clips, pencils, cleaning and sorting the flotsam that a school life created. He finally stood, pushed in his chair, and made a point of tugging his uniform into proper order, tie flat, collar tugged up. The bag went over his shoulder and he nodded politely to the sensei as he walked slowly past him to enter the chaotic halls; the last to leave the room, but his head was already miles away.

Outside the door, the corridor was packed end-to-end with students, a sea of voices blending seamlessly into a dull, indecipherable roar. He was stopped twice on his way to the shoe room, and when he finally made it there it was crowded and noisy. Promises and declarations and plans swirled around him unnoticed as he changed into his street sneakers and placed his school shoes in his bag, and he was so deep in thought he jumped when his cell phone vibrated on his hip. He managed to wriggle out through the bottlenecked doorway as he dug in his pocket for it, and paused in front of the school. The sun slanted into his eyes; he squinted as a warm summer breeze caressed his face and brought the receiver to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Otouto-san."

The day dimmed, a little. He felt a brief sensation in his chest, as though he'd swallowed ice. "Onii-sama."

"How was your last day?"

"It was very nice," Sasuke said carefully as his classmates streamed around him, excitement and childish bliss in their pace, their movements, their voices. "I am glad to be finished with the second year."

"You should enjoy your school, otouto-san. You, after all, are the one who insisted on that particular campus." The voice in his ear was mild, but Sasuke cringed. Unconsciously, his body bent protectively, his free hand coming up to cup the phone as well.

"I very much enjoy my school, onii-sama. I owe you a great deal for allowing me to attend it. I… meant only that I also enjoy the summer weather." And it might have even been true, if Sasuke had not been student council president, vice captain of the kendo club and the number one ranked student in all the previous two year's exams.

Someone spoke to Itachi on the other end, low and female. He ignored them. "I trust you'll be home around the usual time, then?"

"I will be attending a meeting to set the summer schedule," Lie. "And then practice." Another lie. "After that, I will be going to the main house with Hozuki-san for the week, as we arranged."

Itachi made a sound, noncommittal and irritated at once. Sasuke, no matter how hard he tried to still himself, began to shiver under the warm sunlight lancing through the oaks that lined to school's front walk. His stomach twisted, and his hands gripped the phone so hard it creaked.

"Is such a length really necessary? Is it impossible to stay for only the weekend?"

"The main house is very far north, onii-san. It would be impractical."

"What would be most practical, otouto-san, is for Hozuki-san to visit us."

Please, please. "It was very kind for his family to invite me, and we have refused their invitation twice before. It would be unforgivably rude to bow out again."

"Do not presume to lecture me."

Sasuke's breath froze in his chest. "_Never_, onii-sama."

There was silence on the other end of the line, and a cold sweat broke out over Sasuke's face as he waited for his brother's next words.

"You may go."

Sasuke didn't move.

"I only object because there will be no way to contact you there. It is traditional, as a main house should be, but they might have had at the very least a phone line for emergencies. The complex is so remote, and it is certainly allowed —"

Sasuke wouldn't know . The Uchiha main house and all who lived there had burnt to the ground when he was a child, leaving his brother and himself as the last surviving members of the family. Whether the deceased had died before or in the flames was never determined, but Uchiha Itachi had emerged from the incident as one of the youngest multi-millionaires in the world.

The yard had grown quiet and empty while they spoke, and now Sasuke could see Suigetsu through the open doors of the entrance, talking and waving his arms animatedly while his audience giggled and cried out how much they'd miss him.

Sasuke closed his eyes. "I wish to go… 'Tachi-nii."

There was a pause. "Do not address me so informally." Itachi's tone was severe, but it held a note of pleasure Sasuke could count on whenever he used the childish title.

"Hai, onii-sama."

Itachi sighed. "I will miss you, otouto-san."

"I will miss you as well, onii-sama."

"You must be careful, then. You have your things?"

"Yes."

"A towel? A toothbrush?"

"Onii-sama, _yes_."

"I am only concerned for you. I need to look after you so our parents will rest easy."

A series of blistering images flashed through his mind, but he held his tongue. He was so, so close…

He waited.

Finally, "Goodbye, otouto-san."

"Goodbye, onii-sama."

The phone clicked in his ear, and Sasuke brought the phone away from his ear to stare at it.

Phase one, complete.

He then tottered over to a tree and leaned weakly against it, arm over his eyes as he waited for Suigetsu to find him.

A few minutes later, a shadow fell across his face and Sasuke looked up. "That was my brother," he said by way of greeting, referring to the phone still clutched in his hand. His tone was matter-of-fact. His voice didn't shake. His hands were steady.

The other boy groaned. "What did he say?"

Sasuke gave a small smile. "What do you think he said?"

Hozuki Suigetsu cursed and kicked at the grass, hands threaded through his hair. "So, what? This is the last I'll see you for the next two months? Is he going to take away your cell again? Last year I thought you'd died!"

Sasuke laughed, softly, and stood, clasping Suigetsu's shoulder as they began to walk, slowly, toward the open gate. "It wasn't that bad. By the end, I even had a ten o'clock curfew."

"Only with Itachi-bastard would that be a victory. Seriously, you'll write or something, won't you?"

"Sure," said Sasuke as they began the descent toward the city and the train station.

"Sure," mimicked Suigetsu morbidly. "From Sasuke's Room, Day 47. 'Dear 'Getsu-chan, the gruel is especially good today. It has been some time now since I have seen the sun—'"

"Shut up." You don't know the half of it, 'Getsu-chan.

At the station, the students mingled and were lost in the crowds of people thronging close to the tracks, waiting for the commuter trains to take them. Sasuke took the train north. Suigetsu took it south. Between platforms, the two paused, and endured a self-conscious moment of silence.

Suigetsu abruptly turned to face him, said, "OK, before this gets any worse," and gave him a short, awkward hug. He drew back with a scowl and added, "And I want to hear about that gruel, you hear? I'll sic Greenpeace or something on him if he doesn't feed you."

Sasuke, feeling more moved than he was strictly comfortable with, mumbled, "I'm not an endangered species, I doubt they'll care."

"But _I—_" Suigetsu stopped himself. They both knew he cared. Saying so out loud, however, was out of the question. "I—I'll… see you, sooner or later. Right?" he finished, lamely.

"Yeah." Sasuke hitched up his bag, and, before he could betray himself and tell his best friend everything, turned and walked away.

Behind him, Suigetsu cursed under his breath again; but his tone was now more weary than anything else. "See you," he whispered, to Sasuke's retreating back.

--o--

The train was crowded, as usual. The smells and sounds of humanity echoed and wafted around Sasuke surreally. Usually, this train ride was met with a deepening sense of fear and even panic, as it brought him closer and closer to the place he couldn't call home but nonetheless was where he lived, where the hallways were haunted by his dead parents and where the only real monster called him otou-san, lovingly, with a voice like bloody razor-blades.

The train pulled up to his stop. It was only a forty-minute ride or so; not really enough time to fall completely apart.

The train pulled away from his stop.

And Sasuke began to breathe again.

--o--

The rest of the plan was a bit more complicated, and at the same time more simple.

Sasuke got off the train in the city, skyscrapers reflecting waning afternoon sunlight and dirty grey streets in equal measure. He waited on a corner for fifteen minutes, got on a bus, and rode it for another thirty.

He stepped off in a neighborhood of close little houses and bricked-up windows, making his way around piles of garbage in a stinking alley to a small, moldy gym. There, he paid a fat man more interested in his newspaper than Sasuke's money and went into the deserted locker room. He unlocked locker C145 and pulled out a bag that holding some water, clothes, and several million yen. He shucked off his uniform and shoved it in a garbage can, dressing himself in nondescript khaki and a print tee from the bag. After some thought, he shoved his school bag into the trash as well. He slammed the locker shut, left the lock on the fat man's desk, and began the ten-block trek to the third-closest bus station.

From there, he bought a ticket (cash) to another train station. While waiting to board, he crushed his cell into the tiniest pieces he could manage, then divided them between the three dumpsters that particular station boasted.

The train took him to another bus station.

By now, night had leapt onto the unsuspecting summer day. Sasuke, gritty-eyed and achy, stepped off the train into a hard urban nightscape, yellow street lamps clashing with neon bar signs and glaring headlights against the comfortless darkness. The traffic was a constant rush against his abraded senses, the people around him staring straight ahead and moving at a clipped, merciless pace that drew him along until he collapsed, exhausted, against a vending machine in the bus depot.

It took him a few tries, but he managed to coax a few candy bars out of it and ate ravenously, chewing huge mouthfuls with a kind of grateful desperation.

He spent the night like that, too cold and terrified to sleep, seeing Itachi in every face and every shadow, every car and every storefront.

In the morning, dawn cracking like an egg in the powder sky, the 5:15am bus found him hollow-eyed and shaky. He spent the next few hours letting his head bounce off the window while the tiny woman next to him read out loud to her friend particularly interesting passages in her mystery novel.

It was midday when he found himself alone again, at a truck stop with no further public transportation forthcoming. Determined, and perhaps hallucinating slightly from lack of sleep, Sasuke began to walk toward his final destination. It remained, according to the map in his bag, some one hundred and sixty-odd kilometers away.

Five minutes down the road, a sedan pulled over to the roadside in front of him. A window rolled down, and a nice, pretty-looking woman stuck her head out. "E-excuse me. Would you like a r-ride?"

He stared at her for a minute longer than necessary, and her smile faltered a bit. An equally nice-looking man with an identical nervous smile was at the wheel.

"That's kind of you," Sasuke murmured. His voice felt rusty, like he hadn't spoken in ages. "I'd like to go to Rikumura, if you're headed that way."

"We ain't," came a harsh cackle from the backseat of the car. "But we'll take you as far as we can."

The woman's smile was really more of a grimace now. "Of course, Obaa-san," she demurred politely. "Please, let yourself in," she added to Sasuke with a kind of resigned anxiety. After a second, he did.

The next hour was interesting. The young woman and her husband (he presumed) attempted stilted conversation for his benefit while their Obaa-san sat silent next to him, she being the owner of the cackle and a grand total of perhaps three teeth. Her eyes were blind with cataracts and rolled like milky marbles as she stared at him, at the scenery, at her knitting. As soon as the car returned to the road, she had turned to him and pronounced, "You're not head to Rikamura, foolish boy. You," and here she prodded him, hard enough that he winced, "are going to Konoha."

"Is… there any such place?" Sasuke said, after a moment.

The younger woman gave an edgy little titter and said, "Oh, if Obaa-san says so, it's so!"

"And I do," nodded the old woman, pinning him suddenly with those blind eyes. "So we'll take you as far as Sandou. Do you hear me, lazy son-in-law?" She poked the driver with her long, bony finger. He hunched forward slightly and said, "Hai, Obaa-san. Sandou is where we're going."

"And when we get there, don't start walking again, you foolish boy." She poked him with the same finger, right in the sternum again. "Wait for a few minutes, and someone with an already heavy load will come to take your burden."

"Is that so?" Sasuke asked slowly, tired mind trying to make some sense out of it.

"It's so. You'll go to Konoha, where they say a god sleeps, and you'll find a place you've known. A person you've never known. And that's all I'll say."

And that was all she said.

--o--

Late afternoon sun was in his eyes again as the sedan pulled up to an abandoned petrol station. The cracked pavement had grass and tiny white-belled flowers growing up through it and over it, softening its jagged breaks. The tin-roofed shack was bleached the color of bone in the hazy light, cracked windows glinting back at him.

Obaa-san tapped a finger to the glass as the car rolled away from him, going, he thought guiltily, back the way they'd come. How far out of their way had one crazy old lady's whim taken them?

Best to start walking.

But somehow, he didn't. Where the hell would he go, anyway?

The road here was just as cracked and uneven as the rest of the concrete slab the station rested on, weeds and flowers mute testament to the fact that this path was certainly one of the ones less traveled. What had possessed him to let that woman drop him off here, in the middle of nowhere? Konoha? He'd never heard of it. Hadn't seen it on the map. _Didn't_ see it on the map, he corrected himself as he scanned the page more and more frantically. He was having trouble thinking clearly, his head at once full and completely empty, with just one question echoing inside it. Now what?

_Now what, otouto-san?_ Itachi murmured somewhere in his subconscious.

As if in answer, the sound of an engine became audible in the still afternoon.

Sasuke watched, eyes wide and lips parted, as a pick-up with a wooden-sided bed pulled up to the front of the station. Two men, one of whom might have been his own age, leaned over to look at him with identical, put-out scowls.

Their bed was full to bursting. With huge, glistening, gorgeously striped… watermelons.

Sasuke swallowed a hysterical laugh and heard himself say, "I'm looking to get to Konoha from here. Are you by any chance headed in that direction?"

They stared at him, something close to shock on their faces. It was replaced in a moment by wariness, and a certain suspicion on the part of the elder.

"An'... why might you want to go there, if you don't mind me asking?" the man said, carefully.

Sasuke smiled. "An old blind obaa-san told me told me to. She said, if I waited here, that someone would take me there."

The man glowered. "Hmph."

"Che, troublesome," commented the younger. He didn't look wary. He looked bored.

Finally, the older man seemed to relent. "Store's in Konoha," he grunted. "'S no room in the cab. You're welcome to make yourself as comfortable s'y'can in the bed with the melons."

"Thank you," Sasuke said, and had no more put his foot on the tailgate then the dynamic duo had started moving again, bumping and swaying along the more-hole-than-road. Sasuke was sent headfirst into the hard, firmly packed cargo, and it was ten minutes before he had righted himself and lay in a somewhat comfortable position, staring up at the sky while lying flat on his back on what must have been half a ton of lumpy watermelon.

"Y'alright there?" came a question.

"Fine. Great," Sasuke called back, with possibly the last bit of energy he had.

The rocking, after a few miles, was now almost soothing—rhythmic, lulling, and Sasuke felt himself slipping away from reality. He'd been traveling for twenty-four hours straight, without sleep, and this road, those crickets, these watermelons, and even the obnoxious strains of local radio station that the two in the cab were arguing over, wasn't enough to keep him focused and afraid a minute longer.

Sasuke slept.

--o--


	2. Chapter One: Arrival

**The Beach**

Chapter One: Arrival  
by eggadshorace  
» Fandom: Naruto  
» Rating: T  
» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP  
» Classification(s): Romance/Mystery/Supernatural  
» Warnings: Language, Sexual Situations  
» Pairing(s): Sasuke/Naruto

--o--

**A/N:** Really, this is what I get for trying to use Japanese and honorifics… I spent the entire last chapter with Itachi calling Sasuke 'otou-san' as opposed to 'otouto-san'. The difference? 'Father' instead of 'little brother'. Ergh... It has been fixed, but, knowledgeable people who noticed it before, gomen and please don't eat me. However, I will continue to use honorifics and the like because this fic is supposed to be set in Japan, and because practice makes not-crappy. Thanks for understanding!

--o--

Chapter One: Arrival

--o--

The line between dreams and reality was so tenuous that Sasuke had been staring at the darkening sky for some time before he felt the rocking of the truck, the hard press of fruit under his spine and realized that he wasn't sleeping.

It was just so… beautiful.

Somewhere beyond his field of vision set the sun, and its dying color painted every billowing cloud fantastic shades of coral and deep purple, orange and blue and red streaked indiscriminately through soft grey. High, high above him, early stars twinkled with all the bright clarity of diamonds in the deep indigo of the approaching night. Other sensations slowly percolated through his system: the golden heat of the summer air, the somehow heavy, leaden feel of the dying rays of the sun on his skin. Every breeze was a separate sensation. The air… He licked his lips, searching for a word to put a name to the flavor. Heady. Savory. Something that drifted in from the fields they passed, or up from the weeds they crushed under their tires. Delicious.

He sat up then, slowly, and the fat orange disk of the sun nearly blinded him.

Like the clouds above him, the earth around him was limned in gold, pastureland and the regimented rows of crops gilded as if touched by Midas. The ancient asphalt they road over had buckled and cracked over the roots of roadside forests, and where it cracked wildflowers and weedy shrubs had grown. It wound around fields and groves of dense trees; the melons bounced hard underneath him as they traveled over rougher and rougher ground. A few soft strains of music floated up from the cab, but other than that the world gave the impression of holding its breath. Hushed.

He passed a while like that, the simple pleasures of the breeze and the sunset playing out before his eyes as he leaned back on his hands and watched the road unravel behind the truck. It felt like, maybe, something deep within him was beginning to … thaw, ever so slightly. In this peaceful world, it was hard to image someplace like the city he'd fled even existing on the same planet, let alone in the same country.

The trees dwindled in size and number before they gave way entirely to waving beach grass, as the soil gave way to sand and rock. The truck made a sudden turn off of the broken road and into a dune, and Sasuke was surprised to see that an inland sea that had risen up in their path. Power line poles and a stop sign stuck out of the water like buoys, silvery birds alighting on them.

He was distantly disappointed; the actual ocean remained just out of sight, behind the rolling hills.

They returned to the road at the same time the first signs of civilization appeared. At first, it was nothing more than a few distant farmhouses dotting the far horizon, but then they rumbled past a very modern electric station, fenced and accompanied by a tiny office. Outside it, a bent old man paused in the middle of fiddling with an AC window unit to raise a tool in greeting, and the small child with him used both arms to wave energetically at the passing truck.

"Shikamaru-kun! Shikamaru-kun!"

Sasuke looked over his shoulder, and saw the younger of the two in the cab give a short wave in return.

"Are we close to town?" Sasuke asked, curious.

The young man, presumably Shikamaru, looked back with raised eyebrows. "You're awake now, hitcher?"

Sasuke felt a fake smile creep onto his face, but couldn't seem to make it go away. "Yeah."

The other boy turned his gaze to the road. "We're close. Maybe a couple more minutes to town."

"To…" What was the name again? "Konoha?"

"The one and only."

It was true. Even as he watched, trees began to reappear, and more sunbleached and sand-blasted buildings rose out of the seagrass as the road smoothed. The truck began to slow, and Sasuke realized with some shock that the entire village, a collection of at the most thirty structures, was strung out along a single side of the road and made a few blocks at best. On the other side of the road the densely forested earth sloped sharply downwards, dark rock breaking through sand and snarled roots. Through the trucks, something glittered.

Sasuke sighed to himself. His view of the ocean, thwarted once again.

Even here, the town seemed strangely muffled by the heavy gold sunset. Hardly anything stirred. The few people in sight sat on porches and hung out windows, voices low and laughs quiet. Laundry flapping in the wind was almost the loudest sound, once the noise of the truck's engine had died away. The stillness was a little unsettling, but maybe that was because he was used to big city din and big city crowds. In his mind at least this silence was infinitely preferable.

"Hey, hitcher." Shikamaru had climbed out of the cab and now leaned over the bed, staring at him. "How about you help us get these in the store and we'll call it even?"

"Deal," Sasuke agreed, and scrambled down from on top of the pile.

"What're you doing?" the older man asked. "We need someone to hang 'em down, don't we?"

"Er," Sasuke began, but Shikamaru cut him off.

"I'll do it. Hitcher, you got a name?"

"It's Sasuke," he said, somewhat defensively.

If Shikamaru thought his omission of his family name was odd, he didn't show it. Very matter-of-factly, pointing as he spoke, he said, "I'm Nara Shikamaru, this is my dad, and this is our shop, Nara Groceries. That's the school, the lawyer, and the cake shop, and that's it. Welcome to Konoha."

Sasuke looked over at a small, tidy white-and-blue building, with _Nara Groceries_ written in kanji across the front and the windows hung with lacy white curtains. Like every other building in town, it looked old and weathered, but the paint on the trim was new and the curtains crisp even in the summer's sweaty grip. An ancient brick hotel, fully two stories higher and with all its windows smashed in, seemed to lean on the store with the air of a blind, elderly aunt. A few other commercial-looking buildings stood here and there, but the majority of the town was made up of simple, small houses.

"You ready to help yet?" came a dry voice to his left, and a blushing Sasuke accepted two melons and directions to place them on the first bare space he came to inside the shop.

He toed open the door, which jangled a dangling string of bells, and had just walked over the threshold when an angry female voice rang out, "And where exactly have you been, you lazy good-for-nothing bums?!"

A woman burst in from the back of the dim shop with a broom held high and Sasuke froze, eyes wide at the sight of her angry face. The woman halted in mid-rush. "Oh." She lowered the broom with a studiously casual air, smoothing her hair back with one hand and an embarrassed half-grin. "Ah, I beg your pardon. Did you need something?"

With some trepidation, Sasuke gestured with the two melons in his arms.

"Oh, are those ours? Here, here," and she motioned him back through the shelves, through an empty doorframe and into the far room of the shop. The light here was sickly and yellow, but the door to the yard was open and some sweet flower perfumed the otherwise utilitarian space. An ancient coffeemaker gurgled, and in the midst of the shelves a folding table was stacked high with papers and a ledger.

The woman swept a spot on the floor clean for him, and he gratefully set his burden down. Out in the shop, the bells on the door jingled again, and the woman's face darkened. She strode out to meet the elder of the two unfortunate Nara, and reluctantly Sasuke followed, in time to see the woman grab the man's collar and begin shouting. The two appeared to be settling in for a loud and lively row, so he skirted carefully around them and made his way out.

Outside, Shikamaru stacked the melons on the ground swiftly, having emptied the bed enough that when he pulled open the tailgate he wasn't buried under a fruit-fall. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, and Sasuke surveyed the pile. Then the town.

"Are this many watermelons really necessary?" he asked. "Who buys them?"

Shikamaru glanced at him as he stretched his arms, then swung into motion again. "We got talked into buying more than we needed. And there are more people here than just the townies. This time of year, we get a lot of tourists. They rent a beach house—stay a few weeks."

"And buy watermelons?"

"Exactly." He wiped the sweat from his eyes and added, "You'd better start moving. Looks like 'tou-san will be busy for a while."

Sasuke made six more trips (avoiding the increasingly violent husband and wife quarrel) before Shikamaru said anything more; when he did, it couldn't have been more innocuous.

"So…what are you looking for around here?"

Sasuke paused, resting a melon between his thigh and the tailgate, and told himself it was a perfectly innocent question. Completely understandable under the circumstances. Normal. Expected. "I wanted a place to stay for a few weeks, maybe longer if I like it." He might as well stick to the plan, even if instead of Rikumura he found himself in this odd, deserted little beachtown.

"Plenty of rentals to go around. If you're going to be here for a while, you should take a look around the store before you go, get some water, whatever." Shikamaru sighed, and continued to sling watermelon with steady, graceful movements. "It's not like there's much choice, unless you want to walk for a few hours."

Exactly twenty-six trips later, the watermelon had been unloaded, the elder Nara was sporting a new, rapidly swelling black eye, Sasuke was cordially invited to dinner, and Sasuke just as cordially declined.

"Thank you very much for the offer, but I need to find a place to stay. I'd rather do it sooner than later."

The Nara with the shiner scratched the back of his head meditatively. "I'd be no trouble to put you up for the night, even less to feed you, Sasuke…?"

Sasuke gave them another awkward, fake smile as a little trickle of paranoia cooled the back of his throat. "Just Sasuke. Really, thank you for all you've done so far; I don't know what would've happened if you hadn't come along—"

"You'd've collapsed from exhaustion and been eaten by something," Shikamaru muttered scornfully.

"Shika!" his mother scolded, and he shrugged, eyes still on Sasuke.

She fretted, "At least let us drive you to wherever you're staying, Sasuke-kun. It wouldn't be any trouble."

"Thank you," Sasuke repeated, feeling a cold sweat break out on his forehead. "But… it really isn't necess—"

Shikamaru interrupted him. "Listen, can I talk to you for a second?"

"…yes?"

The boy waved his concerning-looking parents off and slung his arm around Sasuke's shoulders with easy familiarity, strange considering their relatively cold conversations. He walked him towards the side of the house were blue twilight had already pooled like water running to the lowest elevation.

"Do you have money?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes…?" Sasuke reflexively glanced in all directions as they paused in the grassy, weedy sideyard, but Shikamaru's grip hardened, and he reached up and grabbed Sasuke's chin. Sasuke froze.

"Stop," the other boy began in a low voice, "looking around so much. My parents have already halfway decided you're on the run from the law, only because you seem a little too old to be a runaway. But that's what it is, right?"

Sasuke tried to jerk away, but Shikamaru only held on tighter. "What did I tell you? Stop it. They were trying to help because you look half dead, not because they wanted to make a citizen's arrest. Calm down."

Sasuke tried to get his breathing under control, but a panic attack was trying to set it. He was almost choking on air.

Shikamaru released him with a curse and shoved him down. "Head between knees, now. Ne, sensei!"

Sasuke, momentarily nonplussed by the non sequitor, glanced up as he fought to get his heaving chest under control. Shikamaru was looking straight up, at the open window of the neighboring house who's shadow they lay in.

"Sensei!"

A half-hearted groan was heard, and after a brief pause a man stuck his head out, resting his elbows on the sill. He had a kind, sheepish smile. "Can't a man get anything done it peace around here, Skika-kun?"

"Umino-sensei, can I borrow your bike?"

The man looked puzzled, and scratched at a large scar across the bridge of his nose. "Now?"

"It's actually for Sasuke here. He needs to get a key from Doctor Sannin-san, before she closes the clinic."

"I do?" Sasuke asked himself, quietly.

"He does?" Umino-sensei echoed. "Why not let him stay with you for the night? It's more than likely she's closed already."

"He'd just like to settle in before tonight, is all, and doesn't want to impose."

Umino-sensei shrugged, and looked down at Sasuke. Somehow, his simple brown eyes and gentle expression were very… soothing. "Just take care of her, then, Sasuke-kun, she's been with me since college. Ah…" He paused, seemingly embarrassed. "I can call you Sasuke-kun, I hope?"

"Yes, please," Sasuke heard himself say. "Thank you. Very much."

The man smiled again. "It's no trouble. The bike is on the porch. I won't need it for a few days, so do some exploring around town. We have a few interesting things to see here."

"I will," Sasuke heard himself promise, and Shikamaru began steering him around to the porch as Umino-sensei waved.

Sasuke waved back, and Shikamaru said quietly. "Sensei's a good guy. If you need something, ask him, and he'll give it to you. It's really that simple for him."

All Sasuke's tired mind could come up with was a chalkboard diagram. Sensei equals good. Got it.

The ancient, slightly rusty bicycle came into view as they rounded the corner of the house. Shikamaru stood it up for him and asked, "Will it work?"

Sasuke considered it. "Why do I need to get a key from Sannin-san?"

"Her name is Sannin Tsunade—she runs the clinic and owns most of the rental property around here. It's early in the season, so there should be plenty of houses left to rent."

As they walked, he pointed down the road, to the north. "Just follow the main road out of town for a few minutes, and off on a spur there's the clinic. She lives there, so just bang on the door until someone answers." They stopped at the end of the sidewalk. "She might be drunk, but that could work in your favor."

Sasuke stared down at the handlebars. "So, talk to Sannin-san, get a key—"

"And directions."

"And directions. Then what?"

Shikamaru shrugged. "Whatever you were going to do, I suppose." He scuffed his foot on the ground, looking across the street towards the glint of the ocean through the trees. "Come back tomorrow… if you don't collapse from exhaustion and get eaten, that is."

Sasuke smiled then, and maybe it was a real one. "I'll try."

Shikamaru continued to study the trees, but his face and voice grew more serious. "They won't come to Konoha." No need to clarify who they--_he_ was. "It's a little weird, but the only people who can seem to find this place are people who've been here before."

A slight chill worked its way down Sasuke's spine. For a moment the unnatural, waiting stillness of the evening prevailed.

"I'll see you later, then."

A shrug from Shikamaru. "Ja ne."

He turned on his heel to walk back to the store, and Sasuke, cautiously, pulled both feet off the ground began to pedal.

He hadn't ridden a bike in… forever, it seemed. It felt awkward and unstable, but as he made his way free of the village and into the empty countryside, he found his rhythm and moved with smooth, long strokes, even as the terrain grew rough again. Sasuke bumped and thumped over the ancient concrete; if anything, the roads were in even worse repair out here. He'd hadn't thought it was possible, but the jarring at least kept him focused on the ride, or he might have fallen asleep upright.

Sasuke shook his head as the bike wobbled and concentrated on what his feet were doing, the hill he was on steeper than any of the others behind him. He reached the top puffing breathlessly, and stopped there.

The water he'd seen through he trees was nothing more than another inland sea. Oh, it was pretty enough, clear blue water sparkling in the sunlight, but it still wasn't the ocean. And…

There was a chimney sticking out of the water.

Everything to the west rose in sharp silhouette now. It took Sasuke a second to recognize what he was seeing, and once he did he saw the rest of the house it was attached to; roofless, with nothing left of it but the outer stone—and even that was almost complete submerged in the sea—but it was undeniably remains. There were several of them, marooned out there in the water, and skeletal tree limbs and boulders broke the surface of the waves around them.

Sitting on one of the boulders was a person.

Sasuke gave a not-quite gasp as he met the silhouetted figure's gaze; he realized that he or she had been staring at him for some time before he'd noticed them, and it made him flush in embarrassment. As he stared, the figure stood in a quicksilver motion that, though unthreatening, had Sasuke dropping the bike and stumbling back a few paces, his pulse hammering in his throat in surprise. Their gazes never broke.

How was it that even though they were separated by fifty feet of water and rock, Sasuke could see that the person's eyes were a solid, cobalt blue?

Even more embarrassed now, he hastily stooped to pick up the bike and made to mount, but then the shadow beckoned to him.

"What…?" Sasuke whispered. "Why?" He felt his suppressed panic of earlier begin to resurface, and he shook his head. "What do you want?"

_Come here._

One step away.

"Why should I?"

_Come here!_

Another step back.

He said, louder, "What do you want?"

The shadow screamed, "Look out, you dumbass!"

"Wha—?"

--o--

He ended up getting to the clinic much faster than he'd anticipated.

It wasn't that much of an impact. The rough roads allowed for a top speed of maybe fifteen miles an hour, and the bike had taken the brunt of it; he felt faintly sad he was going to have to return it to Shikamaru's sensei in such a sorry state. The wheel was bent, the seat broken clean off, and the coil of the chain felt like it was permanently embedded in Sasuke's left calf.

Which hurt like a mother, now that he thought about it—as did nearly every inch of exposed skin on the left side of his body. Fifteen miles an hour was still not a speed one wanted to be dragged along at, and at any speed almost going under the tires was _entirely_ undesirable.

He lay tangled under the bike, trying to catch his breath from sheer surprise, when he heard running footsteps and felt someone suddenly jerking the bike off of him, taking bits of skin with it. He hissed in a breath, and a masculine voice asked, "Can you move?"

He immediately said, "Yes," although the very thought seemed ludicrous. "Really, I'm fine."

Doubt. "You don't look fine."

"You look like you have been through the meat tenderizer of life, my friend!"

Sasuke sat up then, and swayed as he blinked hard to bring the world into focus. If it wouldn't focus, was that bad? "Perfectly fine." _You can go away now._

"Like hell," a gruffer voice said. "We kinda _hit _you; the least we can do is bring you to Sannin's."

Sasuke mused aloud, "Oh. That's good. I need a key."

"Key?" someone muttered.

"He probably hit his head," another said grimly.

After that, things went a little blurry. Voices without faces and faces without voices spun around his head, and he dimly felt himself being lifted into someone's arms.

He waited for another figure to join them. Blue, blue eyes. A guy. Yeah, that had been a guy's voice. A younger guy, with a deep voice that still broke when he yelled.

Any second now.

He came to a little more in the car. It was hard not to, with the bumping and rocking, and strident tones of reproach coming from the passengers to the driver. "Don't go so fast! Isn't that how this happened in the first place?"

He'd barely had a chance to glance at Sannin-san's clinic—exterior white, interior airy, dark wood floor and open windows—before he was sternly pressed onto a bed and told to not move so much as an inch.

His head was clearer now. Ensconced around the cool room were four worried faces. They introduced themselves, but Sasuke wasn't paying as much attention to that as he was to the screaming pain in the various places he used to have skin. The oldest, a guy… Neji, maybe? was the driver. He'd disappeared, presumably to retrieve the doctor. His female lookalike, a cousin named Hina-something, was in near hysterics. A girl with buns loudly accused a humongously eyebrowed boy and his hyperactivity of distracting Neji from driving in the first place. A blond, disconcertingly, batted her eyelashes as she caught his gaze.

For the seventh or eighth time, Hina-something apologized, words trembling. "I am _s-so s-sorry_, I hope it d-d-doesn't hurt t-too much—"

From the depths of the clinic quick footsteps could be heard, and a girl with bubblegum-pink hair burst into the room with the air of an angry rhinoceros, Neji trailing unhappily in her wake. She began a running tirade of angry accusations (directed at Neji) and gentle questions (directed at Sasuke) as she peeled off his shirt, rolled up his pants and got to cleaning the sand and grit from the abrasions on his legs, side, and temple. The room grew darker and darker as she worked, and to her questions—_Does this hurt? Here? I'll be careful, but this one's pretty deep_—he replied in monosyllables and grunts.

Hours later, it seemed, Bubblegum sighed, "All done,", and patted the last of her ministrations in place. Her expression, curiously, was smug. She turned from him to the assembled guilty parties, and folded her arms with an air of righteousness.

"Now, _who_ was it that said I was being morbid and a drag when I decided to help in the clinic again this summer? Who said, _Nooo, Sakura-chan, don't work, no one goes there anyway, just stay at the beachhouse and have fun…_ Hmm? Who?"

"You sound almost happy that someone was injured," muttered Neji, standing to Sasuke's right.

"We still could have treated him at the house," Bun-Girl pointed out, sitting on the floor. "All you used was Neosporin and Band-aids."

Humongous-Eyebrows posed like an Olympic hopeful and gave her a thumbs-up. "Nonsense! We commend you for your hip, modern medical obsession, Sakura-chan!"

"Obsession?!" the girl screeched, and Sasuke watched in disbelief as the blond made her own catcall and all four of them began a verbal fistfight.

"If we're done here…" Sasuke said, tentatively, "I need to be somewhere." He just wasn't sure where. "I needed a key. From Sannin-san."

"Oh." Bubblegum looked surprised, then embarrassed. "Erm, well, she's a bit…"

"Drunk?" he guessed.

She laughed, uncomfortably. "Well…"

"You mean she actually does have keys?" Bun-Girl exclaimed.

"Tsunade-sama is a _legendary_ drunk, able to down ten full-size bottles of sake in a sitting," the blond whispered to him _sotto voce_. "Even summer people like us know that."

"Doctor Tsunade is the best surgeon in the prefecture!" Bubblegum fumed. "So what if she has a few personal problems?"

"Where exactly is she, if you don't mind?"

"Ah…" she gestured. "Back there, in her office, but… mm." She looked taken aback as he stood, stiffly. "I'm sorry," she said miserably as he hobbled a step forward. "She really is—well, incapacitated."

"Someone told me that might work to my advantage."

"What?"

"Nothing." Then he was past her and into the gloomy hallway to the doctor's office.

--o--

"So, you wanna key, issat it?"

Tsunade was indeed drunk. She was drunk, and so was her receptionist Shizune, who had flung open the door to Sasuke's insistent knocks and slurred out, "Tsunade-sama, look! A customer!"

They had drug him forcibly from the office doorway, chattering like magpies, and down a shadowy hallway. Now the two of them faced him over a plain hotelier's desk, two of four wall cabinets opened to reveal what must have been hundreds upon hundreds of keys: little keys, big keys, old and new keys, keys made of steel and iron and brass. It boggled the mind.

"Actually, I want a house to live in."

Sasuke saw their blank looks, and sighed. "A key will do."

Tsunade made a shooing motion with her hands. "Then _pick_ one, so wec'n all get back to our sake."

"Sake!" Shizune sang. Sasuke got the impression she was a much less experienced drunk than Tsunade, if by nothing more than the grating way she giggled as she ran into things (which she did quite often), and tottered instead of walked.

"Are these arranged in any kind of order?"

Tsunade shrugged. "Order'f age. Order'f keys being made f'r houses being built. Pick one, will ya?" She had a raspier voice. Sasuke wondered if she smoked.

While she tapped her foot impatiently, he scanned the rows and rows of keys. Exactly how many beach houses were there in Konoha?

"Are there keys in the other cabinets as well?" he asked, curious.

For a moment, Tsunade's face darkened. "Would ya pick a goddamn key?"

Sasuke shook his head and tried to focus. It really didn't matter where he went, and a random choice could only benefit his efforts at remaining hidden, right?

It was scanning the rows for the fourth time that he saw a speck of red adorning one set. He pointed. "How about that one?"

Tsunade snorted. "Doya have 100,000 yen to pay me each month f'r that creepy place?"

He thought, _Creepy?_ He said, "Yes."

One eyebrow shot up. "Show me the money, punk."

Sasuke hitched up his bag and separated 100,000 yen from his carefully hoarded stack of millions. Lunch money for food he never bought. Returned plane tickets. A fake music tutor's salary. Tips not given. A clothing allowance, when he'd been wearing the same clothes since his first year of high school.

He slid it across the desk and Tsunade recounted it, slowly. "You rob a bank or something?"

"No."

She eyed him. "Good. Stealing will get you nowhere in life."

She reached up and hooked a key on her finger, flicking it to him with an accuracy that belied her drunken state. "The spooky mansion's all yours. Go straight for a few more miles, take a right, then another one. Can't miss it. Your electricity will be on by tomorrow, but you have to turn on the water manually. Follow the pipe."

He blinked. "Pipe?" But she'd already disappeared back down the hallway.

Shizune was fast on her heels, and chirped, "Come back when we're open for some free toothbrushes!"

--o--

When he approached the clinic's front room again, he could see that it had descended into a state of total chaos. Bun-Girl had pulled a knife on Eyebrows and the blonde and Bubblegu—Sakura were deep in a heated, redfaced argument. Hina-something was still crying. Neji glanced up, then stood as Sasuke came into the room.

"Please excuse them," Neji said. "And please excuse me," he added, bowing low. "It really is my fault you're here at all."

"I was in the middle of the road," Sasuke reminded him. "And… distracted. That's not your fault."

"The s-sunsets here are v-very beautiful, ne?" Hina-something said with a watery smile. "The beaches, too."

Neji patted her back, and she seemed heartened. "F-first, we just followed Sakura here, but now we come to K-konoha nearly every summer, even though it's so out of the way."

Sasuke felt that odd, fake smile creep back onto his face, and she looked away, flushing.

Neji looked back at Sasuke, and said lightly, "Well. Since I ruined your bike, how about a ride?" He looked straight into Sasuke's eyes with an easy, let's-forget-all-about-this expression.

Sasuke had never trusted people with that expression, but he wanted to accept. He was hurt, he was tired, and he hadn't seen any streetlamps for miles—the sun was going to disappear in a few minutes, and when it did, he would be shit out of luck.

But…

But.

Sasuke's smile got a little bigger. "No, thanks. I'm sure I can make it."

It didn't seem to faze the older boy. "It won't be a problem at all. Just tell us where you need to go."

Sasuke started moving towards the door. "No. That's fine."

Neji raised an eyebrow, though his expression was still friendly. "That's fine, you're fine. You know, I don't really believe you."

"Please let us take you h-home," Hina-something whispered. She seemed to be finally calming down. "Or wherever you're staying. It just wouldn't be r-right."

"I don't want to impose," and his hand was on the handle. All five of them had stopped to look at him, really look, and the last thing he wanted or needed right now were more staring eyes. It made him feel cornered. "So, see you around." He jerked open the door and stepped into the twilight.

The shadows had lengthened considerably while he'd been inside. The sun was dangerously close to the horizon, lower rim already under the gently rolling dunes, and the world had two colors: gold, and black. He let the door slam closed behind him, and went directly from the wooden porch into the tight cluster of trees that grew beside it. On the other side of a larger tree's truck, he gazed into the dark as Neji's confused voice rang out behind him, and pretended not to notice how hard his heart pounded.

God, he was such a coward.

As the activity on the porch grew, Sasuke was struck by how different the quiet emptiness, the waving grass and soft sand were from his world of not two days ago—and yet the words inside him were the same. _Don't look for me. You can't see me. Maybe you won't ever see me, if I make myself as small as I can._

He looked down at the key he held, rubbing a thumb over the sunken detail. In this light, he couldn't be sure…

But he thought it might be a fan.

The Uchihas did not have any western seafront property. Sasuke knew. He'd checked and planned accordingly, to get as far away from Uchiha influence as he could. So what was this symbol doing on a key in a town you couldn't find unless you'd already been there?

After a few minutes, the sound of a motor catching came from behind him. Soon, it faded away into the distance.

The only sounds then were the waves, the crickets in the bush, and very faintly, one drunken doctor's early summer version of Auld Lang Syne.

--o--

Adrenaline was a curious thing.

As night fell, Sasuke only felt more and more desperately alert as he first strode, then trotted, then sprinted down the broken road with the key digging hard into his sweaty palm.

_Straight, right, right._

With all the panic of an animal going to ground as the nocturnal predators rose, he threw himself into it, running blind as the horizon swallowed the sun.

_Straight, right, right._

When the ground disappeared from under his feet, he leapt and by some miracle of fate hit the opposite bank, though the impact jarred his bones. He kept running.

_Right._ He took it.

_Another right_. He took that. He was running on even ground now, though he couldn't tell whether it was dirt or pavement.

It brought him to two stone pillars, turned blue in the dusky light. He darted between them, and froze as the path split in two. One climbed a hill, clear, but steep enough that he could not see what lay over it. The other turned to mulch and sank into the undergrowth.

Before the decision could actually be made in his conscious mind, he had lurched into motion again and was batting away low branches and dense vegetation, breath coming in fiery pants. He was completely winded now, and the burn spread from his lungs to his throat as he hurtled down the narrow dirt trail to God knew wh—

He unexpectedly broke free of the underbrush and hit a low gate so hard he nearly flipped over it, bent double with the breath he so desperately needed knocked clear out of him. A roiling wave of nausea caught him, and a tear slipped out of his tightly closed eye as he hung his head and bit back bile. His gasps felt like knives now, like his breath should be bubbling with his own blood.

When the nausea had passed, he opened his eyes.

On the other side of the gate, there was nothing but water. Startled, he looked up, and his breath left him again.

This… this was the _ocean_. No inland sea or flooding tide, but the ocean itself.

The teasing glimmers of the waves he'd seen from Konoha's main street were magnified, reflecting sun, shadow, and sky in a glittering wash of sound and movement. It made his head swim with the sudden intensity, after the darkness that had already gathered under the trees. The sun seemed barely seconds from slipping beneath the roiling waves, drawing night behind it like a veil.

Silhouetted against it's light was a tall, rocky island. Under an inch or so of water, a thin trail of unmortared stone flowed directly to it from where the water lapped at the gate. Once it touched the beach on the island's shore, it became stairs. The stairs led up, and nestled there, between the tall trees and rough stones, was a tiny, traditionally-styled house.

He vaguely remembered wrenching open the gate, which protested loudly, and all but jumping into the shallow water. Surreality reigned as he ran forward, waves lapping around his ankles as gently as lovers' caresses, and he barely felt his muscles protest as he climbed that last set of stairs.

The key slid into the weathered lock like silk, but the door was more stubborn. It acted as though welded in place.

There were doors in the back, too, but this time he didn't stop until one broke completely free and fell off its tracks with dry snap.

It was as small on the inside as it had looked on the outside. The tatami mats that had probably once graced its floor were gone, leaving only bare, honey-colored wood. He still felt vaguely guilty as he stumbled over the threshold, his soaked, muddy shoes leaving dark prints. He sank to his knees as his vision darkened and sparked from lack of oxygen, and he willed himself to breath. In and out. He knew too well this drowning feeling; wouldn't that be funny, if he killed himself with his own neuroses before Itachi even thought to look for him? He caught himself in the first dry heave and clamped his arms around his stomach, then rolled on his back.

It smelled dusty. Not moldy, but dry and empty like old attics. The walls were bare, the floors bare, although there were two interior doors to rooms that might yield less sparse accommodations.

Hardly a creepy old mansion.

His head faced the broken door, and through the doorway a wide swathe of rapidly dimming sunlight spilled. The breeze that followed it inro the dead space carried with it the sound and the taste of the waves.

As that glow struck his eyes and that taste filled his head, he realized that it was done. Finished and accomplished. He was where he wanted to be: away. Far, far away. There was nothing left to do, now, but live or die here, and as fast as this dizzy exhaustion was stealing over him, faster than the night eclipsed the day, it seemed like he was closer to dying.

His eyes slid closed. He already felt like he was dreaming. _For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…_ His limbs lay limp and unresponsive, while his mind slowly quieted. The sound of the waves seemed to recede as the sunlight faded.

Something touched his face.

He was definitely dreaming now, because the soft graze along his jaw didn't surprise or scare. He didn't remember opening his eyes again, but Sasuke now gazed up into an unfamiliar face and saw nothing but blue, blue eyes.

Ah. Him.

Their faces were really too close for anything else, so Sasuke brought his leaden arms up, around the boy's neck. "Well?" he breathed. There was a flicker of soft shock in the blue.

Then he was being kissed, cool saltwater dripping onto his skin and wet tendrils of hair sticking to his face. Dreaming. He never realized how cold he'd been, before the kiss called something hot from deep within, like a dam had burst inside his body and now he was flooded with this. With… him.

It was his last thought before spiraling away into the darkness of true sleep.

--o--

**A/N:** So, in total, how many watermelons are there? ,

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…" – Billy Shakespeare, baby. Hamlet.

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially considering that this fic owes its whole setting to this lovely manga: www.onemanga. com /YokohamaKaidashiKikou/1/02/ .Removed spaces as needed.


	3. Chapter Two: Battening Down the Hatches

**The Beach  
Chapter Two: Battening Down the Hatches**  
by eggadshorace  
» Fandom: Naruto  
» Rating: T  
» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP  
» Classification(s): Romance/Mystery/Supernatural  
» Warnings: Language, Sexual Situations  
» Pairing(s): Sasuke/Naruto

-----------------------o-----------------------

Chapter Two: Battening Down the Hatches

-----------------------o-----------------------

_Water._

The first thing he heard was the low rush and beat of the sea on the rocks. It wound through his dreams like threads of a mother's lullaby and followed him into consciousness, almost subliminal under the cry of the seabirds and the muted noise of the wind.

Ruining the soothing effect somewhat was his own surprised, agonized moan as his body registered the abuse of the day before. His left side was on fire, every separate cut and scrape burning as his clothing, stiff with salt, rubbed against them through the bandages.

He gritted his teeth and tried to sit up, but only managed to roll on his right side as his muscles rebelled and knotted themselves into painful cramps. "Fuck, fuck, _fuck_," he hissed at the floor. His voice was hoarse and guttural, like he'd swallowed glass. He road out several minutes of full-body agony, coughing weakly with his cheek pressed to the cool wood floor. This close, he could smell beeswax.

_Water._

Around him, the tiny house creaked in the soft breeze. The sun was still low but bright and hot, slitting in and around the door he hadn't been able to open the night before. Sasuke, eyes crusty and barely slitted, could see his pack lying a few feet away, every inch caked with salt and mud and lit up like a torch in the beams. As his breathing evened, he ran his tongue over his cracked lips, which bleed and stung, and winced as his mouth filled with the coppery-iron taste of blood.

"Water," he whispered croakily. He couldn't remember ever being this thirsty in his _life_. Then, "Shit." She said he'd have to turn on the water, that there was a pipe somewhere. His memories of the night before were cloudy and indistinct, swimming through his mind's eye like fish through murky water.

Water…

He'd had odd dreams. Odd for him, anyway; odd, because he more routinely dreamed of fire, smoke and blood-smeared darkness. He supposed more people would find _that_ odd, rather than dreaming of starfish on cobblestones, of the dimness beneath the waves. There'd been submerged streets lined with lamps that still glowed, and temple grounds where only kelp and coral grew. There had been fish, yes, of every kind and color and description. They had danced in the eerie diluted moonlight that marbled the sea floor.

He began focusing on stretching out his body, easing his arms into a stretch and rotating them as the tendons protested fiercely against the movement, and as he did something fell out of his palm.

He stared at it as it rocked lazily a feet inches away, then slowly reached to pick it up, holding it up to the hard morning sun flooding in the doorway. Heavier, but big as a marble, lumpy and misshapen, with a deep, lustrous iridescence.

A pearl.

And with that thought, unbidden, came a sudden memory of bright cerulean eyes.

Sasuke's eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. Well, that was one explanation. One strange, very doubtful explanation. Had he really…? All of yesterday swam before his mind's eye through the kaleidoscope eye of pain and exhaustion, panic and numbness by turns, and a kiss that warmed like a shot of whiskey. The boy felt like a dream. Even their first—and he was sure _only_—actual meeting, Sasuke on the hill and the boy sharply silhouetted against the sunset, seemed surreal and improbable in the light of day. The kiss had never happened—he could remember so little of it now that it must have been a dream. _All_ of this could have been a dream.

Except that he hurt, everywhere, and was dying of thirst while the speckled sunlight baked his already tender skin. The pearl sat in his palm, glistening with an almost oily sheen.

_Water._

He set the pearl aside. He had other things to worry about now.

Propping himself into a sitting position was exhausting, and crawling to his knees proved almost too much, but in ten minutes he was rummaging through the pack and twisting off the top of one of his bottles of water and in his enthusiasm getting more of it on his face than in his mouth, but he just didn't care. It felt so damn good, wetting his eyes and soaking into his collar while he drank in huge gulps. Nausea threatened again, but he gritted his teeth and drank and drank until the bottle was empty.

The water gave him the strength to rise unsteadily to his feet, and made the background gurgle of his empty stomach erupt into pain that made him groan out loud. Another rummage through the pack turned up nothing but empty wrappers, and he sighed. "First, pipes," he said out loud, words like gravel in his ruined throat. "Then, food." And then a wash, he thought with some distaste as his clothes moved on him with all the flexibility of cardboard.

First, to find pipes. There were the two interior doors he'd yet to open. The first revealed a short hallway, and off of that a small, dark kitchen. The smell was mustier here, and the air on his skin felt clammy.

His hand automatically went to the switch on the wall and he looked up in surprise when the light hummed, then blinked on. Three of the four bulbs had burnt out, but the remaining shed enough light to see a fairly modern-looking range and refrigerator, and an ancient set of cabinets and counters. A quick investigation confirmed that those cabinets were completely empty, as was the fridge.

There was a tiny window over the sink, and though the wood had swelled in the frame until it was watertight Sasuke managed to ram it open. Across the room, sunlight streamed through a shouji screen; shoving it back revealed boxes and furniture stacked in the narrow space between the screen and the wall, and another small window with a view of the dense vegetation of the shore. He opened this one, too, and a crossbreeze began to stir the dead air of the room.

Under the sink, the pipes stubbornly refused to sprout an "On-Off" valve. The same with the pipes in the water closet, just down the hallway.

The second door off the main room opened into a sunken bathroom. He tripped down the short step and nearly fell into the tiled tub, only half-covered by an old-fashioned wooden lid. No valves there, either, although a rather beautiful and complex funnel web had been spun across the washbasin and into the drain. Sasuke stepped back up into the main room, wincing as his stiff jeans rubbed on the unbandaged scrapes on his leg, and then crossed the room to the broken door that faced the sea.

The world outside gleamed in jewel colors, sapphire and emerald and topaz. The sun was behind him and cast the house's shadow into the clear blue water that lapped at the shore of the small island, ten feet from where he stood. Across the shallow cove something glittered in the sunlight, in and amongst the trees on the mainland. Windowglass. He stared at it, but couldn't distinguish the outline of a building. The forest was too thick.

The scenery was half-wild now, but the island and shoreline looked as though they had once been landscaped, and lavishly; there were the fences that had once framed flowerbeds, and stone paths that wound gracefully under the tall grass. Everything that might once have been tended had since been allowed to run rampant, and the result was a snarled jungle of vines and overgrown topiaries. The little white-belled flowers he'd seen on the road had colonized the gravelly earth around him, and where the trees hadn't shaded them out they grew in an uninterrupted carpet to the sand of the water's edge.

Some horticulturalist had sculpted clouds out of the evergreens that grew around the house, decades ago. Now the bushes had grown and spread in a thick verdant screen, wisteria and jasmine tangled in the branches, and it was all he could do to pry them apart to search the sides of the house. Sasuke startled a bird (although not nearly as much as it startled him), and just beyond its perch saw pipes exit the house and disappear into the ground.

No valves in sight.

A few more minutes of exploration proved that these were indeed the only pipes on the house, and that white-belled flowers made treacherous footing. With a few more bruises and bloody scratches, Sasuke pried himself free from the undergrowth and stood staring in incomprehension at the brightly-colored package sitting on the stairs into the main room.

Instant ramen.

He whipped around, but the only thing that caught his eye was the wink and glitter of windows across the cove.

-----------------------o-----------------------

He walked, quickly, across the now dry stone-in-sand path that led to the little gate which had no fence. The footing on the path beyond was uneven and dangerous, more vertical than flat; it was a miracle he hadn't killed himself, running down it in the dark. It was a miracle that he'd stayed on it at all, as overgrown and narrow as it was.

Breathing harshly, he eventually came to the split where one path led up a set of stairs, too steep to see over. He was surprised to see, in the light of day, that the road in continued past both paths. He stared down it for a moment.

Then he continued up the stairs.

They opened onto another path made of what had probably once been pure shell gravel. It was mostly dirt now. It ran straight down the middle of a long allée of trees, ending in a door.

It was a strange optical illusion, and for a moment his eyes told him that the trunks were walls and the canopy a ceiling. The wind chose that moment to shift the trees into rustling conversation, and Sasuke saw that the door was merely another gate, tall and somehow ominous.

By the time he had reached the gate, he could see the corner of another building, immense, all but swallowed up by summer growth. It was made of dark gray stone, with tall black-lined windows peering out from underneath the foliage.

This, then, would be Sannin's 'spooky mansion'. One of the keys she'd given him fit the gate, which eased open with a long, drawn-out shriek of rusted metal.

It was Western in style, he saw as he came up the gravel path and around the corner, with a wide veranda and cracked columns in the speckled sunlight. The house—manor—sprawled across a clearing that was rapidly giving way to the forest. The only part of it still in direct sun was the roof, black slate with moss growing in its nooks and crannies. The dusty white gravel formed an oxbox curve up to the house, then away into the trees.

The front door was an ornate slab of solid cherrywood, weathered and pitted from the elements. The second key slid haltingly into the lock and turned in jerks, before the door gave way and Sasuke edged into the dim, quiet stillness of the house.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected. A huge fan mosaic? Fireplaces adorned with the family crest? He wandered from the huge, empty foyer through room upon room of sheet-draped furniture and shuttered windows, and there was no indication an Uchiha had ever set foot in this place—apart from him, as his fingers left trails in the dust that had gathered and his shoes scuffed the carpets. He scared the hell out of himself, coming around a corner and suddenly face-to-face with a floor-length mirror. With his livid bruises and bandages, he looked like a refugee from a war documentary.

Walking through a long corridor open to the elements, he looked out on ocean and realized that on this side of the house, the ground dropped away into oblivion less than a meter from the foundation. He shuddered from a moment of vertigo, and moved on.

A window had been broken in the massive kitchen, and dead leaves were scattered across the floors and marble countertops. The dry crunch they made under his feet was a welcome interruption of the oppressive silence.

The kitchen had a narrow set of stairs ascending into the gloom of the second floor. He took them, and as he reached the top step a voice echoed up from somewhere in the house. He froze with his foot on the top tread, and considered following the immediate urge to hide.

"_Hello?_"

Preferably under a bed.

"_Sasuke-kun_?"

A little disgusted with himself, he eased up the last step and crept down the upstairs hallway, until he came to an open portion that held another staircase, spiraling fluidly down into the two-story foyer. Standing there was a nervous-looking Bubblegum, her virulently pink hair and wide green eyes looking just as much like plastic Easter-grass as they had the night before.

"Hello! Sasuke-kun?"

Hiding from this would be silly, and pointless.

"Yes?" he asked, and had the pleasure of seeing her jump.

"Oh! Sasuke..kun, ah, hi. Tsunade sent me with some things. Your bike. A futon and stuff… you know?" She looked down, then up and rocked back a little on her heals—and any threat Sasuke might have seen in her was banished. He was well accustomed to the effect he had on the female of the species.

"I'm sorry she made you do that," he said sympathetically, straightening away from the wall and moving to the top of the staircase.

"No, really, it was no trouble," she said, and colored. Sasuke could have laughed. "There's quite a lot of, er, stuff. It's outside in the truck."

"I'll help you unload," he said, almost amicably as he began moving down the stairs. "But I warn you, I haven't been able to turn on the water yet."

"Oh, no!" She smiled a little, and edged playfully away from him as he reached the first floor. "You mean you haven't had a bath in a whole day?"

_More like three,_ he thought, but kept a bland and apologetic look on his face. That damn fake smile was trying to creep up on him again. "Unfortunately." She giggled, and held her nose as he walked towards her.

Unexpectedly, as he came closer her hand dropped and her eyebrows knit in genuine concern. "You're bruised black and blue, Sasuke-kun. I'm really, really sorry for what Neji did, honestly. He's such an idiot."

"Like I told him, it wasn't all his fault. I was stopped in the middle of the road at the top of a hill. He couldn't have seen me in time." He pushed open the door, and she followed him out. Her car was a true POS, rusted through in so many places as to resemble a vehicle-shaped doily. She wrenched open a backseat door and started pulling things out.

"He thinks you're holding a grudge," she told him as she handed over a fruits basket. "You disappeared last night, and they couldn't figure why." She gave him a sidelong look from under her lashes.

Sasuke shrugged, the picture of unconcerned ambivalence. "It was nothing personal, and you can tell him so. I had the bike in the first place because I wanted to find a place to stay before the sun set."

"And by the time I finished patching you up, it was getting dark, right?"

"Yes. And thank you for that," he added, as she seemed to expect it.

"Oh, you're more than welcome." She actually simpered, a little.

There was the fruit and futon, and a few other mystery bags, but also an electric kettle and a surprisingly well-repaired bike, prompting Bubblegum—no, no, it was Sakuya or something, right?—to ask, "Did you ride here? It's an awfully long way from, well, pretty much anywhere."

"I got a ride," he said, evasively. "I was lent the bike. I'm glad Tsunade was able to straighten it out; it looked terrible."

"She had help," Sakuya said, and giggled again. "She has an admirer who's always trying to do 'manly' things for her."

"Oh?" he said politely, as she shut the door and they gathered things to carry in.

She glanced over at him, her head tipped coquettishly. "You know, the usual. 'I, a man of great honor and decency, will take care of you, a single woman of a certain age. Don't you worry your pretty little head.'" Her snort was just this side of indelicate. "Being 'of a certain age' hasn't stopped her from knocking Jiraya unconscious, and good for her."

Eyebrows raised, Sasuke watched as she hefted the bags, the basket, the blankets, and the appliances, leaving him to wheel the bike slowly after her. He kept his comment to a noncommittal "Mmhm."

He couldn't remember where the kitchen was exactly, so when asked told her to leave everything in the foyer. She was staring around again, taking in the vast emptiness of the place. "Are you really going to stay here, all by yourself? Tsunade calls it the spooky mansion for a reason, you know; a lot of people say it's haunted."

"I haven't seen anything frightening," he said, mentally adding _Except my own reflection_. She shrugged.

"It's probably because it's old, and abandoned for the most part. The last time anyone lived here full time was more than fifteen years ago, I think. Oh!" she exclaimed, suddenly enough to make him jerk. "Two things, before I head back to the clinic.

"I turned your water on, on my way in; the service pipe and the house's local pipes intersect at the road. Two, Tsunade says to consider yourself paid through the summer, with utilities. If she hadn't been, ah, _incapacitated_, she never would have let you pay full price for this place."

"That's good of you, and her," said Sasuke, who had been wondering in the back of his mind if he'd really had the 10,000 yen a month to maintain the fiction he was living in the huge manse. Still, now there should be running water on the little island.

As if she'd read his mind, she continued, "There are a couple different little teahouses and things on the property which all have their own pipelines, so it can be confusing to direct the water to the right place. Um?" Sasuke had, with subtle body language, been herding her toward the door, and she seemed somewhat surprised to find herself outside again.

"Good to know," he said. _A teahouse?_ "Thank you again—but don't let me keep you. I'm sure you're needed at the clinic."

Sakuya looked disappointed, but rallied herself enough to smile and purr flirtatiously, "Come by whenever, and I'll rewrap your ribs. No appointment needed for Dr. Haruno Sakura."

She climbed in the car, and it started with a choked roar and a cloud of bluish smoke. She waved, he waved, and she rattled off down the oxbox and back into the trees. He waited until the noises of the ailing engine died away completely before he turned back to the house.

The appliances, excepting the electric kettle, he set aside as unneeded, and besides that impossible to maneuver down that ridiculously rough path back to the island. The fruit he took, and the first bite of apple might have been ambrosia of the gods.

It reminded him of the ramen he'd left on the step, and the reason he'd come to the house in the first place. But he was certain that the only footprints in the dust were his. He knew he hadn't explored the whole of the house by any means, but he was satisfied with his conclusions. There was no one here.

Someone was watching him, and that worried him. He picked up the futon and bags, and maneuvered them out the heavy front door. Someone was watching, but to act as scared as he had last night was completely counterproductive. Hopefully Sakuya—Sakura would do something to smooth over his questionable actions with Neji and that group; he wanted them to forget they'd ever seen him, not go around wondering what the hell was wrong with him.

A package of 15¥ ramen was by no means a hostile overture, he reasoned as he kicked open the screeching gate. He'd said he was hungry, hadn't he? It was, if anything, neighborly… and somewhat childish. There was nothing menacing about that.

But…

But.

He slipped through the allée and down the stairs as quietly and quickly as he could, heart fluttering at every rustle and scrape in the underbrush, every insect buzz that came too close. After hesitating a full minute, he left his burdens at the split and stole back up to the road. The sudden sunlight almost blinded him, and the sudden heat made him aware of how thirsty he'd become again and how gritty and uncomfortable his clothes were, but there at the corner was the switching station, and here was a valve clearly marked, "Island", along with three others.

The sunlight made him feel vulnerable, and he was glad to return to the cool shade of the trees. The path to the teahouse was even more treacherous on the way down than it had been on the way up, descent complicated by his full hands and bulky burden. He made it to the small gate, still open from his earlier passage, completely out of breath, battered and desperate for water and a bath. Counter to those plans, his legs made the decision to sit without him and the resulting sting sung up his spine and had him gritting out a curse.

He could admit that it was a nice view. There on the threshold between earth and water, sun and shadow, the island stood in all its green and rocky splendor. The sun was directly overhead now, and glinted off the waves with an eye-searing sparkle. It looked postcard-perfect.

He looked down for a rock smooth enough to skip, but his eye was caught by something strangely-shaped and half-buried in the sand.

He reached for it and worked it loose, and found himself holding a small stone statue. It was an animal, but age had rendered it otherwise unidentifiable. He looked around, curious, but only after he had levered himself back on his feet and stumbled a ways down the shoreline did he find the toppled shrine, and righted it. He found no other stone kami, and the dedication stone held no names, only a jagged spiral, but still he set the statue back on the altar and, after a pause, took out a persimmon and set it next to the solemn figure. He folded his hands, and said a short prayer of thanks.

You never knew. Maybe it _was_ a miracle he'd made it down alive.

The water, when he first turned on the faucet, coughed and sputtered and ran an evil rusty red. When it finally ran clear, Sasuke climbed into the tub and let the cool stream flow over his face, soaking through his hair and then his shirt and pants. Running water was a miracle in its own right.

-----------------------o-----------------------

He ate the ramen, still damp from the bath and arguing with himself over every mouthful. He fixed the door, but left it open, and opened its stubborn opposite. He pulled a table and pads out of storage and them up in the main room. He put the fruit in the fridge. He unpacked the dishes, all of them, and folded the futon into the closet where they'd been.

After nearly an hour letting the sun bake his already tender skin, restlessness drove him from the island, along the shoreline. He'd soon lost sight of the island, but found an orphaned cement sidewalk a foot below the surface of the water; shoes in one hand, he followed where it wandered.

At one point it approached the shore and rose out of the water. He walked into a deserted collection of gutted, roofless buildings with saplings growing through them. Things had been half-buried in the earth that seemed to have flowed up like quicksand around the structures, and the water lapped hungrily at it all; there was old, rotted timber, plastic deck chairs, toys, a post office box. A stop sign glittered out in deeper water. In one sheltered corner Sasuke found the remains of an upright piano, half its keys missing and the body and strings splintered under the weight of an interior fallen wall. Still, his fingers picked out the entrance suite to Swan Lake, the soft notes swelling only in the imagination.

He walked on, leaving the concrete for the shoreline again, but even here there were signs of a drowned city. Marooned signposts, a bare three inches of fire hydrant poking out of the sand. It all had such an… apocalyptic feel to it.

The sun blazed across the sky, and under it Sasuke wandered, purposeless but striding with a determined air through the tumbled rocks and ruins. He still followed the shoreline, but he'd ascended to the loamy bluff that overlooked the sand dunes. The trees were thicker and older here, and amongst them Sasuke found another weather-beaten shrine. The small animal's pointed muzzle looked more lupine here. Sasuke gave it a brief nod before continuing on.

Through the dense foliage he saw a cracked and flaking stucco wall, and when the thin path he followed turned toward it he followed. Expecting another ruin, he was almost on top of the small building before he realized that it was whole and roofed, and that the strong smell of coffee and fried food hung in the air around it. A dingy, discolored sign read only, 'CAFÉ', and the place had an air of general disrepair, but the glass of the windows was spotless. A door led out onto a small wooden landing, and there a bored-looking girl was leaning against the railing. A hand with a cigarette between two fingers was paused on the way to her mouth, her eyebrows raised as she stared at him.

After a moment of surprised silence on both their parts, Sasuke remembered himself. "Ah, hi."

"Hey." With that, the cigarette continued slowly up to her lips, and she took a long, slow drag as her eyes scanned him coolly. "You must be a new renter," she decided, every word wreathed in smoke. Obviously, she didn't like new renters. She was blond, hair tied in messy knots on her head. She was wearing a worn white apron with the same inane 'CAFÉ' blazoned across it, a bikini made entirely of thin orange string, and very brief cut-offs.

Another drag. "Really new. Welcome to Chiyo's."

"Chiyo's… café?" he guessed.

Her eyes narrowed in a way that said, _dumbass_, but all she said out loud was, "That's us." She flicked the cigarette to the floor and ground out the coal under a pristine white flip-flop. "May til August. Nine to nine. You coming in, or not?" _Dumbass._

Sasuke gritted his teeth, and smiled. "Sure thing." _Bitch_.

Her eyebrow jerked up again as if she'd heard the subtitle, but she returned his bared-teeth smile with one of her own. She jerked open the door and motioned him inside. "Well, then climb on up and we'll get you seated!" _Asswipe._

In between the bathroom and kitchen doors, he had no doubt.

He'd reached the top of the stairs before he heard a surprised yell and the rattle of cutlery hitting the floor. The girl was still holding the door open but now stared inside with some confusion, allowing Sasuke to crane his neck around the frame in time to see another door opposite them swing gently shut.

The café was occupied by two other people, and both of them had turned towards the other door with similarly surprised expressions. One was standing, dressed in the same apron as the girl, and had two empty glasses in his hands. He turned to look at the second, who was sitting at a table with his apron crumpled in his lap, and shrugged. "Maybe he had an appointment?"

But the seated boy turned to look at Sasuke and the girl, and it was very clear from the homicidal gleam in his ice-blue eye that he was sure the blame lay elsewhere.

The girl threw up her hands. "Hey, Gaara, he's your friend. Unless he suddenly developed a phobia of boobs, or—" _dumbasses_— "summer renters, I've got nothing."

The full force of Gaara's glare shifted onto her, and Sasuke surprised himself by breathing a sigh of relief. The girl rolled her eyes and crossed the threshold, letting the door go so that Sasuke caught it an inch from his ear. He followed her negligent wave to a table, took the laminated menu she gave him and scanned it while an itch built between his shoulder blades from the force of Gaara's stare.

The café was surprisingly nice inside, huge bay windows with padded seats and painted plank walls in seafoam, tan and white. There were a few kitschy pieces of driftwood and sailcloth, but for the most part it seemed… friendly…

Well, no. Not when he was fairly certain that the strange boy behind him was testing the spontaneous combustion point of cotton t-shirts from heated glares. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gaara had moved behind the counter and was methodically washing a plate in a manner that suggested he was trying to strangle it.

"Don't worry," said the girl blithely. "He almost never actually kills anyone. Ready to order?"

He'd taken his first sip of the best lemonade he'd ever tasted when the older boy, sitting slumped in a windowseat over a newspaper, said "Oi, imoto. Boyfriend's here."

Sasuke looked up at her scoff and creak of the opening door, and Shikamaru slouched into the café with his usual bored expression.

Despite her derisive sound, the girl leaned back on a table in a position designed to impress, or at least distract, and purred, "Hi, Shika-kun."

He nodded to her, but to her visible annoyance almost immediately turned his attention to Sasuke.

"Hey," he greeted him. "I see you found Chiyo's. They have good food, but it's mostly Suna-style."

"'But'?" Temari objected with a pout. It was an odd look on her.

"But," he repeated. "I don't like that much spice on anything, let alone my ice cream. This is Sabaku Temari-san and Sabaku Kankuro-san. They work in the café for a friend of the family." No introduction of Gaara, Sasuke noticed, and then realized that the boy was no longer in the room.

Much to his dismay, Shikamaru pulled out the chair next to him and sat down. Even more dismaying, Temari followed suit. Kankuro stood up and stretched, and ambled over to the counter to pour drinks while Temari immediately set to monopolizing the conversation. By the time her brother set a soda in front of her and joined them at the table, she was deep into a story about spiking dango with Tabasco and stolen cigarettes. "—and you should have seen his face! Kurenai-nee-sani couldn't stop laughing."

After a few minutes of silent suffering, Sasuke decided that it wasn't worth finishing the lemonade if he'd have to listen to this. He straightened away from the table, and Temari looked up in surprise—which quickly morphed into a sort of spiteful glee. "Oh, you're leaving, Sasuke-kun?"

"Yes. Have a nice chat," he told them, only mildly sarcastic. "How much do I owe for the drink?"

"On the house," said Temari, who seemed much happier to see him go than come. "Welcome to Konoha, Sasuke-kun."

Shikamaru just watched him.

Sasuke went out the front door and had stepped down from the short landing when the crunch of gravel warned him, and he was able to turn and get an arm between them before Gaara had grabbed him, fingers digging painfully hard into his skin. "What did you do to him?"

"I have no idea was you're talked about," he said, trying to jerk his arm away.

"He ran like he'd seen a ghost," Gaara gritted out, other hand balled into a fist. "_What did you do?_"

"Sasuke-kun," said Shikamaru, on the landing behind them. "Why don't I walk you home?"

"…sure," Sasuke said, and shook off Gaara's loosened grip. He backed away from the angry boy as the other's attention turned to Shikamaru; he looked as though he might challenge him, eyes hot and jaw tight. Shikamaru met that stare, then deliberately turned his eyes to the road that wound away from the café, strolling down the stairs and past him. Sasuke allowed himself to drawn along in his wake.

He could still feel those eyes on them after the café had passed out of view and they were in the trees again, picking their way down the rutted road.

"You seem to be doing better."

"Hn." Sasuke was still a bit bemused by events, and not altogether thrilled by the company.

"Your color's good. Those dark circles are gone."

"I slept."

"You're not smiling any more. I think that's a good sign, with you."

The lazy intensity with which Shikamaru watched him drew his attention away from his own thoughts, and he belatedly attempted to deflect the other's interest. "Nara-kun… what happened here?

Shikamaru's eyes flicked away from him, to the horizon. "What makes you think something happened?"

Sasuke shrugged. "Things. The empty hotel. The powerlines under the water. All the deserted buildings."

Shikamaru mirrored his shrug. "It's not much of a mystery. A hurricane came through a while back."

They'd walked a few seconds in silence before Sasuke prodded him with, "That's all?"

A sardonic smile hovered at the corners of the other boy's mouth. "It was enough."

They'd taken the first right turn before Sasuke realized Shikamaru was leading him right to the manor, and he swallowed against the brief flicker of alarm in his stomach. "You don't have to walk me home," he said, a little too forcefully.

Shikamaru responded with a mild stare. "Just being neighborly. Neighbor."

That brought to mind the instant ramen, and Sasuke badly wanted to ask if he'd left it. But that would reveal too much, to this boy who already saw much more than Sasuke wanted him to. "… tell me more about Konoha," he blurted out.

"You've already seen most of it. It used to be a fairly large resort town, fifteen or sixteen years ago. The hurricane wiped out more than half of it."

Shikamaru slowed to a stop, and Sasuke realized they had reached the two stone pillars that marked the entrance to the manor's drive. The boy seemed to be looking for something up the road, and as he craned his neck Sasuke edged as casually as he could manage to stand directly between the pillars. Shikamaru was not going any farther than this.

"There," the other boy said abruptly, and pointed. "See that?"

There, squatting next to the pavement and almost lost in the seagrass, sat another shrine. Even from this distance Sasuke could see the familiar animal kami and serrated spiral.

"There's a local god whose symbol is the uzumaki, for the hurricane. Although this part of the country gets hit every summer, for decades Konoha managed to escape serious damage from tropical storms. You'll find pieces of those shrines everywhere, most of them from before the Showa period."

"Interesting," he mumbled to himself.

"I always thought so," Shikamaru agreed. "Hey, Sasuke-kun?"

"Mm?"

"You found the Uchiha house with no problems, right?"

Sasuke jerked his eyes back from the shrine and was caught in that deceptively lazy gaze.

"It can be a little tricky, since these old estates usually have a couple of cottages and things on the ground. But you've found the mansion, right?"

Sasuke was suddenly very aware of the pipes protruding from the ground next to him, the valve marked "Island" firmly on. "Yes," he forced out. _How much does he know, or guess?_

Shikamaru's small smile as he turned to go was his only answer.

-----------------------o-----------------------

The sun was dying away into the sea again, and Sasuke blinked languidly against the afterimages as he held the pearl up to the bloody light.

He lay flat on his back amongst the white flowers on the western shore of the teahouse island, turning the gem in his fingers and watching the gleam. The water rose past his heels, buried in the sand, and teased his bare calves before receding, only to wash back up with the next wave. The tide was rising again.

The ramen was childish. A pearl, especially a natural pearl of this size, was not childish. Or… maybe it was. Picked up on a beach somewhere? Possibly. Did pearls just wash up like beachglass or seashells?

Somehow, he doubted this one had. It must have been decades in the making, to be so large, and despite its lumpen surface it was polished to a mirror shine. Did that happen naturally?

A small noise from the direction of the teahouse intruded on his thoughts, and he tilted his head back to see the literal boy of his dreams freeze in the middle of climbing around the corner of the teahouse.

A moment of deer-in-the-headlights shock became a deeply guilty expression, and the boy looked down, then up, then down again before venturing, "Er, hi…"

Sasuke stared.

The boy straightened from the corner, and gave a nervous laugh. "Ah, ha ha. I'm… I mean, I was… just walking through, and I thought I'd, er, stop by. Again."

At Sasuke's continued silence, he continued somewhat desperately, "I'm Naruto, by the way. Uzumaki Naruto."

Sasuke was speechless another long moment, and the boy's blush became distinctly visible. What finally came out was a disbelieving, "… your name is 'spiral'?"

"Yes?"

_Well, it either is or it isn't, idiot._ Sasuke kept the thought to himself, and instead pulled himself upright and turned to face… Naruto. He held the pearl up. "Did you give this to me?"

He hadn't thought it possible, but the boy looked even more awkward at this.

"Yes, then. Why?"

Naruto's face was redder than the carmine sunset, but he managed, "I just… did, okay?"

"Well, take it back."

"…no."

"I can't keep it. It must be worth a fortune."

Naruto's expression was becoming more mulish than embarrassed. "It's yours, alright?"

"Let me see if I have this right," Sasuke said slowly, twisting to face him more directly and folding his legs under him. "You follow me into my house, molest me—"

"Hey! Who grabbed who, bastard?"

"Who _kissed_ who, idiot?" Sasuke countered silkily.

Naruto folded his arms. "I only kissed you because you grabbed me!"

"I only grabbed you because—because…" And here Sasuke was at a loss. He couldn't think of a single sane impulse that might have provoked the action.

Naruto saw himself as vindicated. "Hah! And it sucked!"

Sasuke took a moment to make sure he had properly understood this, then replied, "I beg your pardon?" His tone could have flash-frozen lakes.

Naruto leaned forward and carefully enunciated, "_The kiss sucked_. I've had wetter pecks from women in babushkas, and you fell asleep two seconds into it."

The flat-out attack on his male pride swept all thoughts of the utter strangeness of the situation from his mind, and Sasuke sputtered, "I—I was exhausted! I hadn't slept in days!"

"Or you just suck." Naruto was grinning a little now, and Sasuke found it absolutely intolerable.

"Forget it! Get off my island." He turned to glare out at the sunset.

There was a snort. "_Your_ island? You've been here, what, a day? Twenty-four hours?"

"I'm paying for it, so it's mine. Leave."

There was a short, scandalized pause, and then from somewhere behind him came a sigh and the soft sound of sand under Naruto's sandals. Instead of disappearing to wherever dreams came from, the boy sat down next to Sasuke and propped his forearms on his knees. For a moment, the gulls made the only conversation in the evening air.

"This isn't how it's supposed to go," the boy finally muttered to himself. "See, I introduce myself—the awesome Uzumaki Naruto—and then you say your name."

He looked pointedly at Sasuke, who was still making a great effort to deny his existence. "Hey. Hello? Oh, that's really mature."

"Like calling yourself 'the awesome Uzumaki Naruto' is any more mature," Sasuke retorted, still not looking at him.

"But I _am _awesome," Naruto explained, with such sincerity that it won a reluctant snort from Sasuke. "Now, your name."

"Uchiha Sasuke," he said, and almost clapped his hand to his mouth in horror.

"Hey, at least be honest," said Naruto, sounding injured.

"I'm sorry?"

"Fake names are pretty obvious if you call yourself after the house you're staying in."

"… right."

"So?"

"What?"

Naruto gave him an exaggeratedly patient look. "Your name, please."

Sasuke's lips crooked before he could stop them. "Sorry, you'll have to be satisfied with Uchiha Sasuke."

The boy actually pouted, and made Sasuke stifle a chuckle.

"For now, I'll let it go. The next part is more important."

"Is it?"

"Of course! You thank me for my wonderful gift."

A flinty glint in Naruto's eye prevented Sasuke from once again offering to give the gem back. "Thank you," he said, reluctantly.

Naruto nodded. "You're welcome. Then you thank me for the tasty ramen."

"Er, thanks," Sasuke replied, with a mordant edge. Yes, Naruto definitely fit the definition of 'childish'.

"And then, because there's no way anyone could really be _that _bad of a kisser, I lean in like this," and he demonstrated, bringing his face within centimeters of the surprised Sasuke's. "And I kiss you again."

He really did have the most startlingly beautiful eyes, blue shot through with lapis and indigo. "You kiss me?" Sasuke murmured perplexedly.

"Yep."

"…alright then," he breathed, eyes already slipping closed in anticipation.

"See? It's better my way," Naruto whispered, and kissed him.

The first few seconds were sweet and rather innocent, their closed lips rubbing softly against each other. Sasuke let the edge of his teeth graze Naruto's bottom lip, and Naruto's tongue flicked out to wet his, and Sasuke took the opportunity to suck the appendage into his mouth—there the kiss heated. Naruto gave a soft groan and pressed closer, gripping Sasuke's jaw to find a better angle as his suddenly adventurous tongue stroked playfully along the roof of Sasuke's mouth, and Sasuke felt a shudder work its way through his body. Naruto grew bold, tongue pressing deep to tangle with Sasuke's and kissing him literally breathless. He broke the contact enough to gasp out, "_Na—_" but the rest of the word was smothered as Naruto kissed him like he would swallow him whole.

A hand on his chest, and Sasuke allowed himself to be pushed down onto the sandy shore. Naruto was silhouetted against the sunset, leaning over him so that his face looked outlined in fire. Just before their lips touched again, Sasuke murmured, "Why are you doing this?"

It seemed to give Naruto pause, the first thing that had. He started to say something, stopped. His perpetual grin slowly faded as he stared down at Sasuke.

"Because you made an offering and said a prayer," he said finally, tilting his head so that the sun spilled into Sasuke's eyes and blinded him for a moment. "You're the first that has, in a long, long time."

Unable to open his eyes against the light, Sasuke only felt him draw away. Then there was only a sudden distinct lack of presence. He rolled to the side and looked blearily around the island. But for him, it was deserted.

But for where Sasuke had walked barefoot and lay, there were no prints in the sand.

-----------------------o-----------------------

**A/N:** During the (long, long) reviewing process, I was looking back over this and realized that I write like a point-and-click. It's not a particularly disturbing revelation, since I like point-and-clicks, but I can see how it might be excruciating to someone who doesn't. That's all!

i Sometimes, a nee-san is just a friendly older girl.


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